All This Is That reheated: Hobo signs

Here are examples of some of my favorite hobo signs:


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445 Days To Go: The George W. Bush Presidency Sputters To A Halt

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Photographs from Keelin Curran and Maureen Roberts' recent Grand Canyon expedition

More photographs from Keelin Curran and Maureen Roberts' recent hike in the Grand Canyon. Photographs by Maureen Roberts and Keelin Curran, Copyright 2007. Click all pictures to enlarge.

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Dennis Kucinich questions The President's mental health and hours later later admits seeing a UFO

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush's mental health yesterday because of comments he made about a nuclear Iran causing World War III.

"...we have to start asking questions about his mental health," Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board on Tuesday. "There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact."

Later that night, during the Democratic Presidential debate, Representative Kucinich admitted he had seen a UFO (see yesterday's All This Is That).
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Jenkem: better living through chemistry

Jenkem is an inhaled gas which reportedly causes dissociation and hallucinations. It is made from fermented sewage (most frequently, the user's own urine and feces). Jenkem was first reported on in 1995 on the Inter Press Service Wire, and the BBS ran a news report in 1999. Recently, Jenkem has been sweeping American high schools. It is apparently still popular in various places in Africa.

The Wikipedia says: "According to Fountain of Hope, a non-profit organization, Jenkem is used by street children in Lusaka, Zambia as a substitute for ordinary inhalants such as glue or petrol. The news reports give no information as to how or when the children first began manufacturing jenkem."

Jenkem is made by placing urine and feces in a plastic bottle and allowing it to ferment in the sun for days. You then sniff the resulting gas. If you don't believe me, do a GIS. I did, and got 20,000 Jenkem hits...

You do have to wonder, though, about outhouses and honey-pots. Does Jenkem explain hillbillies? I remember being at a Willie Nelson-Old 97's show this summer, with the hundreds of porta-potties sitting in the 100 degree sun. No wonder the lines were so long! Was everyone just jenkem-ing down?

In the late sixties, I remember people getting high--or attempting to--on various ordinary, and less revolting substances like glue, gas, and other inhalants of course, nutmeg, morning glory seeds, and banana peels (remember the Donovan song Mellow Yellow?):

"Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase"

Jenkem. Well, kids, at least it's still legal, unlike Cannabis (THC), Barbiturates, atropine, scopolamine, nutmeg, nitrous oxide, phencyclidine (PCP), Opium (Papaver somniferum), codeine, fentanyl (Duragesic®, Actiq®), heroin, hydrocodone (Vicodin®), hydromorphone (Dilaudid®), meperidine (Demerol®), methadone (Methadose®), morphine, oxycodone (OxyContin®, Roxicodone®), oxymorphone (Opana®), dextropropoxyphene (Darvocet®), ephedrine, MDMA (ecstasy). MDEA, MDA , mescaline (found in peyote and other cacti), cocaine, dextroamphetamine (crank), methamphetamine, dimethyltryptamine (DMT, found in numerous plants), psilocybin and psilocin (found in psychedelic mushrooms), ergine, LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide), amyl nitrites (poppers), chloroform, and quaalude.

For a limited time, All This Is That will ship you everything you need to create Jenkem: jug, balloon, sterile water, and the raw ingredients, for just $89. Send us a PayPal cash payment, and the kit will arrive within a week. If you want the deluxe kit, send us $12,000, and we will deliver the kit personally, in your brand new Hyundai Accent. . .yours to keep.
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Alien Lore No. 117: Dennis Kucinich in Democratic debate: : I saw a UFO

In the bizarre finale to last nights Dem debate, Congressman Kucinich responded to a question by Tim Russert, saying yes, he has seen a UFO.

To make it even better, it happened at Shirley MacLaine's house! Kucinich quickly tried to clarify that it was [not a flying saucer, but an "unidentified flying object."

Barack Obama did not bite when asked about life on other planets. "I believe there is life here on Earth," he said, and went on to propose ways of helping the people we know actually live on earth.
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Painting: the twisted bunny

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War Games, the movie

If Matthew Broderick only made two movies, that would be good enough for me. I have always liked both Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and WarGames. Wait...maybe he only made two movies...naw. . .but I only saw him in two. I digress. War Games was a big hit, and before cell phones, and before more than just a few Americans owned computers, this film introduced us to the world of hacking, phone-phreaking and, of course, global thermo nuclear war. Yeah, there was a little romance, and some parent troubles to make it all palatable. But it was mainly about a boy who got in over his head when he got into the menu pictured above, and nearly started a nuclear war. He was logged in to DARPA/net, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. That network later transmogrified and expanded somewhat to become The Internet.



The scenario was improbable, but good.I haven't seen the film since around the time it was released (the mid-80s). I wonder if it would hold up?

Finally, and I just remembered this. . .this is the movie that popularized the phrase Defcon (1,2,3,4,5). You still hear the word every now and then in the media...
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The War of the Worlds appeared 69 years ago (includes link to download the show)

It was sixty-nine years ago tomorrow--on October 30, 1938--that Orson Welles caused a national panic with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"--a tale of an ugly Martian invasion of Earth. Click here to download an MP3 of the entire hour broadcast. It's great radio, and truly horrifying. It is such great radio that it changed radio forever. I probably listen to the whole show several times a year.

Welles was 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company updated H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds for national broadcast. Welles had already been in radio for several years, in "The Shadow." Mercury Theatre had no idea of the uproar "War" would cause. They did not intend to create a panic.

Millions of Americans had their radios on--but they were listening to Edgar Bergen (Candice's dad) and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. When that show ended at 8:12, the masses tuned to Welles's drama. By then, the Martian invasion was well underway. An announcer reports that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.

A reporter at the crash site describes a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder:

"Good heavens," he declared, "something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me ... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it ...it ... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it's so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate."

The Martians rode walking war machines and fired "heat-ray" weapons at the puny humans gathered around the crash site. They killed 7,000 National Guardsman, and after being attacked by artillery and bombers the Martians released a poisonous gas into the air. Soon "Martian cylinders" landed in Chicago and St. Louis.

Across the eastern seaboard, panic broke out, including massive traffic jams in New Jersey of people trying to escape the martians. When news of the real-life panic leaked into the CBS studio, Welles went on the air as himself to remind listeners that it was just fiction. There were government investigations but no one was ever reprimanded or arrested.

Orson Welles went on to make great movies, including Citizen Kane, surely one of the greatest American movies ever, A Touch of Evil, the Magnficent Ambersons, and a handful of other great movies.

Click here to visit a page with a downloadable MP3 of the entire hour broadcast. It's a great show. And an early piece of Alien Lore.
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Painting: unglued

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Everything she's tried to bottle up
Suddenly breaks free
And swirls around her head
Like a mad herd of bees.
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Keelin Curran and Maureen Roberts at the Grand Canyon

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Maureen Roberts and Keelin Curran as they hiked down the Grand Canyon last week. They spent several days in the canyon, and packed in all their water, etc., carrying packs that weighed about 1/3 of their own weight.
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Painting: Alien

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